Snark Tank; Recap

The Good Fight 1.9: Self Condemned

Despite the gimmicks I enjoyed this episode and I can’t believe we only have one episode left!

Photo credit: CBS

Scandal News:

Maia is deposed by FBI Sue Sylvester and realizes she at least suspected three things:

Her mother and Jax have been hooking up for a while.

Her father was not being forthcoming with the Foundation they started in her name.

Her parents’ fund was a scheme.

We witness Maia coming to these conclusions through flashbacks and it is not clear how much of Maia’s memories are, well, clear. Agent Sue literally breaks it down for Maia and the audience with an anecdote about a childhood memory that she’s misremembered her entire life.

This is a somewhat clever way to force the audience to feel as off balance as Maia does. And Rose Leslie — who has been doing absolute wonders with what’s been a pretty thankless role so far — really sells Maia’s confusion, dismay, and guilt. The interrogation comes down to one question: If Maia didn’t know about the Ponzi Scheme, why didn’t she let Amy’s parents invest?

Photo credit: CBS

Lucca, acting as Maia’s lawyer but also 100% on her side as her friend, coaches her to let the guilt go and just give Sue a reason, such as a desire to keep love and finances separate. But Sue doesn’t believe her, likely because when Maia tells this at least partial lie, it’s the first time she seems sure of anything.

I admit that I am already entirely bored of this scandal and I really just want Henry, Lenore, and Jax put away so Maia can get on with her life. While Maia’s vague knowledge that something was going on is at least more interesting than Henry’s plea bargaining and the non-event of Jax and Lenore’s affair it’s only really Diane’s and Amy’s appearance in Maia’s memories that I actually care about.

We finally really get some backstory on Amy and Maia’s relationship, and in an entirely tongue in cheek scene, we watch Diane ask the Rindel Trio what they think Bernie Madoff’s wife knew when. The Rindels — at least in Maia’s memory — act shifty and try to move an incredulous and clueless — at least in Maia’s memory — Diane off the topic.

The episode ends with Agent Sue set to prosecute Maia.

Photo credit: CBS

Case of the Week:

Colin Sweeney is not my favorite guest client and I don’t even know what the point is without Alicia. He claims to have called her and been told she can’t take his case, which I take to mean Alicia is definitely not practicing law right now.

In any case, Diane and Adrian end up with him due to convoluted exposition that Adrian has a buddy at the county jail who slips him intel on potential police brutality and this one, despite being the worst possible victim (their COPA contact literally laughs out loud and walks away), is against a cop they know to be problem: he’s the one Adrian was prosecuting and Diane was defending in the pilot.

It’s a Colin Sweeney episode so there’s a sex party, a lying witness, a lot of misdirection and legal maneuvering and the strong possibility that none of it is worth it because, as Diane puts it, Colin is “the devil.” Suffice it to say, Jay is a good investigator, the cop is a terrible person, and Colin Sweeney is gross but not guilty of this particular thing. As above with Maia, what I really care about is the character and relationship building the case allows us to see.

Adrian really is on a mission to get bad cops off the force and it invigorates Diane. We barely see Barbara but Erica Tazel is another actress really working what little she gets. With one look she gets across that Barbara supports Adrian’s initiative, even when it takes them to defending Colin Sweeney, but also thinks he’s a bit pie in the sky. She doesn’t outwardly roll her eyes with affection but that’s what I see.

Scheme of the Week:

The closest we get to a scheme this week is Colin’s attempt to become an ambassador through large contributions to the guy in charge of assigning them — and then keeping his name out of court discussions of the sex party. Yawn.

After last week’s acceleration of, and then abrupt end to, Lucca and Colin, Colin does not even appear in the episode. I don’t doubt he’ll be back, after all he’s been revealed to be the political side to this series, but his absence drove home that he only really matters in relationship to that relationship. So far we’ve only seen him act as a lawyer opposite Lucca.

As stated, we finally get backstory for Maia and Amy! They’ve been together, in one sense or another, since at least Maia’s eighteenth birthday party, where they snuck away from Maia’s boyfriend (presumably the gross photographer from episode four) to make out in the driveway. That’s more than five years strong!

We also get one look at Amy’s parents, uncomfortable in Maia’s house because they’d been rejected from joining in the Rindell Fund. Flashforward to now and they must be so relieved. I do worry how Maia protecting Amy’s parents being the catalyst for her arrest will affect their relationship. I also worry that Amy’s vague awareness of what Maia was doing could affect her job. And that is the perfect place to note that Amy, like Colin, so far only matters in relationship to her relationship. We have yet to see her prosecute a case at all.

Until this episode I wondered if I was reading too much into the relationship between Diane and Adrian. But here I get canon on screen confirmation that I’m meant to be shipping it. First of all, they are lounging around together after hours, sharing a drink and chatting about the case, but also their lives. This in and of itself is not so different from a Diane and Will scenario (or fwiw what we’ve seen of Adrian and Barbara), and I’m convinced they were purely platonic. But. This right here?

Photo credit: CBS

Is a woman with her flirt on. And his body language responds in kind. And after their personal exchange about happiness and purpose he suggests they have dinner sometime. And she says she’d like that. And that is not only a clear lead up to a potential date, it mimics first season Will and Alicia and sixth season Finn and Alicia. MY SHIP IS REAL.

Next Week: Wow, ten episodes goes quickly! The season ends next week with the return of Kurt and TGW/F’s version of Anonymous.

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Anika Dane works at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She is a writer of words. A dancer of dreams. A pop culture blogger. A feminist and a fashionista. A Social Justice Klingon Warrior Princess who fell in love with the Skywalker family when she was seven years old. Mother of girls. Secretly a dragon.